America Loses Its Religion

A new poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reveals that a record number of Americans (19.3%) have abandoned faith and now consider themselves unaffiliated with any particular religion. According to USA Today:

“This group called ‘Nones,’ is now the nation’s second largest category after Catholics, and outnumbers the top protestant denomination, the Southern Baptists. The shift is a significant cultural, religious and even political change…Today, the Nones have leapt from 15.3% of US adults in 2007. One in three (32%) are under age 30 and unlikely to age into claiming religion, says Pew senior researcher Greg Smith. The new study points out that today’s Millennials are more unaffiliated than any young generation ever had been when they were younger.”

If you want to understand the reasons behind this trend, take a moment to read a disturbing letter that Twin Cities Catholic Archbishop John Nienstedt sent to the mother of a gay son. In it, the holy man told the mother that her “eternal salvation” might depend on whether or not she embraced the anti-gay teachings of the Catholic Church, thus rejecting her own child.

Talk about family values!

Such a callous admonition might have worked in the past when people had little education. It may have resonated in bygone eras where gays and lesbians were invisible and easy to demonize as “the other.” It could have held sway had the Catholic Church’s credibility not been in tatters after spending more that $2.5 billion to help right the wreckage wrought by pedophile priests and their enablers.

While Nienstedt’s arrogance and cruelty stands out as particularly odious, it isn’t just Catholicism that is in decline. In a world that is increasingly more complicated, with infinite possibilities and pitfalls, as well as seemingly unlimited access to information, the idea that one faith owns absolute truth is a notion that is slowly becoming obsolete.

I, for one, believe that the 19.3% figure for “Nones” is too low. A substantial number of people only identify themselves in surveys as belonging to a particular faith for one of three reasons:

Habit: People over thirty were brought up in a world where everyone was presumed to have a religious affiliation as both a mark of faith and cultural identity. So, when asked whether they belong to a faith group, they reflexively check the box, with little thought to their own belief system or actual adherence to the religious convictions they claim. As the Nones make themselves more visible, it gives these folks a new box to check – and many of them will.

Fear: For centuries, it was dangerous for people to acknowledge their genuine beliefs. “Today, there’s no shame in saying you are an unbeliever,” Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Albert Mohler complained in USA Today. With people like Mohler losing their ability to ostracize and impose social consequences, millions of people finally have the ability to “come out” and exercise their freedom from religion.

Politics: Even today, if an ambitious person wants a successful career in politics, it is easier to fake having faith, than acknowledge being a non-believer. The result is that politicians appear significantly more devout than the general population. Once this taboo falls, which is likely to occur in the next decade, it will open the door to a more honest dialogue about the role of religion in public life. Of course, this can’t happen soon enough, with the Religious Right arduously working to demolish the separation of church and state.

Religious extremists have long claimed that the acceptance of homosexuality would bring down the fundamentalist church – and they have been proven correct, albeit not for the reasons they proffered. The downfall occurred not because gay people stopped heterosexuals from reproducing or recruited their children. Not because LGBT individuals hated families, which they had always, been a part of. Not because homosexuals despised faith – because the abundance of deeply religious gay people proves this is not true.

The fundamentalists undermined their legitimacy by worshipping homophobia long after it had been exposed as a false God. In this unholy obsession, the sacrifices left bleeding at the altar were truth and justice. When people see their own sons and daughters and friends and co-workers coming out, it creates a crisis of credibility for religious institutions. It leads to countless situations where mean-spirited men like Nienstedt demand blind, irrational obedience and say take it or leave it – and more people are now following their consciences and walking away.

I’ll conclude with this: The political coalition of the future is non-dogmatic mainstream people of faith and the Nones. In the coming decade these two groups will forge bonds and create a dynamic force that rivals the holy book literalists who today hold power disproportionate to their numbers. This will be a much-needed correction to the outmoded ideas and celebration of ignorance that is holding back our nation’s promise and progress.

About the Author

Wayne Besen is the Founding Executive Director of Truth Wins Out and author of “Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth” (Haworth, 2003). In 2010, Besen was awarded the “Visionary Award” at the Out Music Awards for organizing the American Prayer Hour, an event which shined a spotlight on the role American evangelicals played in the introduction of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill.

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10 Comments

PJB863October 9, 2012 at 1:03 pm -

The problem with this survey is that it tries to pigeon-hole people into outdated classifications. Protestants do not march in lockstep, nor do Catholics. Protestant can mean anything from conservative Southern Baptists to ultra-liberal Episcopalians or UCC members. The same even holds true with Catholics, as most are what the Vatican derides as “cafeteria Catholics,” which is another way of saying Catholics who think for themselves (something the church hierarchy detests). There is a wide variety of opinion among the Nones too (and even the Nuns!).

Paul DouglasOctober 9, 2012 at 1:11 pm -

Good analysis, Wayne. I myself had a deconversion from Christianity in November of 2009. I simply woke up one morning and realized after almost 40 years, that it made no sense anymore. I also realized that fundagelicals were far more dangerous to a healthy social order than I had ever imagined when I was religiously observant. Like you, I have no problem with non-dogmatic religionists who aren’t legislating their brand of morality on the rest of us, but I do have a problem with activist religionist of any stripe trying to impose their version of Sharia law.

The problem is, I don’t see the fundamentalist religions in decline, I see the mainstream, non-dogmatics losing membership. I suspect that is because the latter group is more open to reason than the fundagelicals and they reason themselves right out of religion. The fundagelicals use fear and falsehood to keep their flocks in line and, in an age of such economic insecurity as we live in, the gullible are always looking for a life-raft…. and a scapegoat.

And that’s one of your better looks at the trend towards the future. What you predict is happening. Which is why I’m not only not worried today about the Christian Right & Fundamentalists, but in fact, welcome their scourging us constantly. They are showing themselves to be fools; their coming collapse all the bigger. People like Gallagher, these Cardinals, Perkins, et al, have created a fake demon, “Homosexuality.” Meanwhile, the nation meets gay folks. And the two don’t jive, and we are good, Gay is Good. And the fundies lose. Bring ‘em on.

I think you are correct in that there are far more non-religious people than admit to it. When I became an Atheist 35 years ago, I still SAID I was a Methodist, because I didn’t want to get into an argument, as happened a couple times. Now, I blurt it out and am surprised at how many others are, too, or at least don’t argue.

melinda nelsonOctober 11, 2012 at 12:50 am -

“The fundamentalists undermined their legitimacy by worshipping homophobia long after it had been exposed as a false God. In this unholy obsession, the sacrifices left bleeding at the altar were truth and justice. When people see their own sons and daughters and friends and co-workers coming out, it creates a crisis of credibility for religious institutions. It leads to countless situations where mean-spirited men like Nienstedt demand blind, irrational obedience and say take it or leave it – and more people are now following their consciences and walking away.” W Besen

I agree.

But “walking away” doesn’t mean there is something compelling or right about what is being “walked to.”

I agree with PJB863 regarding this research being locked into old categories and paradigms.

The crowd walking from the churches are also walking from politics. So your hopes about the Nones political engagement might be off.

One must consider that the real shift is not about religion at all–but how institutions and associations are formed and live in this era.

Regan DuCasseOctober 15, 2012 at 1:05 am -

I don’t think homophobia has influenced this in any major way. But I do think that the inevitable hypocrisy that hovers over many influential faith communities is what has turned people off.
You have pastors being busted for adultery, sex with underage parishoners and little help for women in crisis with domestic violence.
Mega churches make a big show of political lobbying, and putting a lot of effort and expense into anti gay policies. Or even anti woman policies.
But there are few women who are the leaders in these churches, and the disparity in influence can be glaring in some places.
Unless and until faith communities start living up to their own credo of treating another as they’d be treated, then they won’t have credibility, nor do they deserve it.

Am I the only one wondering how many of the 80.7 percent belong to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

Jean-PierreOctober 24, 2012 at 8:12 pm -

In my experience with Orthodox Judaism there is a controversy and tension between those who want to maintain all the law and prohibitions with modern science and those who want to rip our pages dealing with evolution from science textbooks.

Those who are modernists tend to view homosexual orientation as a reality that should not have to be changed through reparative therapy, while the more conservative (and larger) group have unscientific views about how the etiology of gay sexual orientation is rebellion against God.

I think that this tension is in other religions as well.

I think that deep down believing in something as obviously mythological as a world created in 6 calendar days undermines the belief in God.

That belief is supernatural and beyond science, but doesn’t have to contradict science.

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